The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale

Series Info/Source: This is the complete Maus graphic novel. I got a copy of this as a Christmas Gift. Thoughts: The dense writing style and heavy lined black and white artwork were a bit intimidating at first but once I got started reading the story I didn’t even notice it or find it hard to read. This story is completely engrossing. Spiegelman does an amazing job of alternating between the past and the present and recounting the intense and sad story of his father living through the Holocaust. What amazed me is he did in a way that was incredibly impactful without ever being too dark. I was completely engrossed in this book from page one. And I quickly grew to love Maus’s father and his family. I was continually surprised how much of Maus’s father’s survival was because of how resourceful his father was. His father is extremely adaptable and takes on every chance he has to learn a new skill, this (along with quite a bit of luck) is the number one thing that leads to him surviving the nightmare of the Holocaust. Is this an uplifting book? Not really, it is more of a cautionary tale. Even though his father survives the Holocaust, the effects continue to echo through his life many years later. The people who survived the events of the Holocaust have to live with the Holocaust forever in their minds and this continues to affect their families generations later. So much thought and skill went into telling this story; it was just incredibly well done. There is some irony to the fact that I asked for this for Christmas and then shortly after it was banned in Texas because of inappropriate content. I don’t know how to tell people this…but the whole Holocaust was inappropriate and it would be really hard to tell an accurate story of what happened without going into some of the violence and death that happened. Is the violence and death presented in an excessive way in this book? Most definitely not. Discussions of the gas chambers and killing of children in the streets of ghettos are addressed matter of factly. Hiding in piles of dead people’s shoes and witnessing the aftermath of a gas chamber are things that really happened. At the time these people were trying to survive one atrocity after another; the atrocities were fact and they are presented as such in this book. People did what they could to keep themselves and their families safe. Should you have your five year old read this? Well do you want to explain the Holocaust to your 5 year old? I might hold off for a bit. We talked about the Holocaust with my son in late elementary/early middle school. He actually checked out this very book from his middle school library and had A LOT of questions for us after he read it. They were excellent questions and we had some very good and thoughtful discussions as a family because of this book. This is a incredibly valuable way to learn about the Holocaust. I think it should be available for everyone in middle school and older to read. My Summary (5/5): Overall I was incredibly impressed with this graphic novel and the amazing job it did blending the past of the Holocaust with the effect it continues to have on people’s day to day lives. I would recommend to middle grade and up readers because the Holocaust is a complicated topic and kids need to be a certain age in order to begin to comprehend cruelty on this scale. Is this book excessively violent or “Inappropriate”? No, not at all. It addresses the topic with excellent candor wrapped into an incredibly engaging story of one man’s survival of these horrific events.

OVERVIEW: Maus is an excellent read. Art Spiegelman is a cartoonist, and comic book creator, but he wanted to document his dad's experience surviving the holocaust. So, he interviewed his dad in a series of conversations. This book chronicles these, giving the reader a dialogue version of Art's dad's haunting struggle for safety and survival as a Jew in Poland and in Germany during the holocaust. It also provides context to the interview itself, telling of his dad's strained relationships with his family along with the author's own fears, concerns, and struggles in writing this book. CONCERNS: A couple of the main concerns with this book are (1) the author's use of animal metaphors to depict groups of people (eg., Jews are drawn as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs), and (2) the fact that the book is a comic. (1) In addressing the first, this is a concern that resonated with me when deciding whether or not to buy this book. The author uses mice as a metaphor for Jews, cats for Germans, pigs for Poles, mix-breed dogs for Americans, etc. The metaphor - even to the author's own admission (p203) - occasionally gets tangled when actual animals come into play. For example, his shrink's house is "overrun with stray dogs and cats" and he keeps a picture of one of his cats in his office (p203). Similarly, Anja (Art's mom) is frightened of rats which Vladek (Art's dad) claims are just mice in order to calm her fears (p149). But the main concern with these metaphors is that the author depicts Poles as pigs. Critics reasonably say that this is unfair considering that Poles were also greatly persecuted by Nazis and explain that many Poles were kind to Jews and hid and fed them during the war. Indeed, why did he choose any of the animals he chose? This is a fair concern, and I have to possible explanations for it. The reasoning behind mice and cats is a bit more clear. The Nazi Regime and propaganda referred to Jews as mice. The author includes a quote at the beginning of Maus II: "Mickey Mouse is the most miserablee ideal ever revealed... Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal... Away with Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!" - newspaper article, Pomerania, Germany, mid-1930s (p164). Thus, since the Nazis portrayed the Jews as mice as well as their prey, it was fitting to depict the Germans as cats. But why Poles as pigs? Some say this is how the Nazi regime portrayed them though I can't find much evidence of this. Another reason is that this is possibly how Vladek (the author's dad) saw them. Vladek's story recounts several times Poles risked their lives to hide or otherwise help Jews (eg., 140-150, 192,195). But he also acutely remembers how many other Poles aligned closely with the Nazis: Some Poles taught their children that Jews would bag and eat them (p151); Vladek and Anja were betrayed by Poles (p157), the kapos who "ran" the concentration camps were Poles, and even after the war, Vladek and Anja heard stories from other Jews of Poles who were still driving away, beating, and killing Jews (p291-292). Vladek is portrayed throughout this book as highly difficult to get along with, selfish, and racist. This leads the author to seriously question if he should even finish writing the book as he fears it might cast all Jews in a negative light simply because of his dad's behavior. (2) Spiegelman himself admits that comics is not the ideal method of relaying holocaust stories. In the book, he tells his wife, "There's so much I'll never be able to understand or visualize. I mean, reality is too complex for comics... so much has to be left out or distorted." To which she replies, "Just keep it honest, honey." (p176). Ultimately, though, I do not think this is as big an issue as many see it to be. I understand where critics are coming from, but this is just one book and one person's retelling of their survival of the holocaust. It is not nor is it meant to be exhaustive or a main source on the holocaust. Spiegelman is simply using his talents (comic book creation and writing) to tell his dad's survival of one of the darkest times in history. Furthermore, many people are looking for an underlying message in Maus - one that does not exist. Spiegelman mentions this toward the end of Maus II when he is being hounded by interviewers asking unhelpful questions. One interviewer says, "Tell our viewers what message you want them to get from your book." To which he responds, "A message? I dunno... I - I never thought of reducing it to a message. I mean, I wasn't trying to convince anybody of anything." (p202) FINAL THOUGHTS: If this is the only book on the holocaust you are reading or if you intend it as your sole education on the holocaust or WWII, then don't read it. If, however, you are wanting to hear a variety of holocaust survivor stories, then I definitely recommend this being one of them. It is honest - even when painful to be so - and sheds light on a few of the ways in which survivors were traumatized. Even the fact that it is a comic provides a uniqueness to it that I believe to be helpful in hearing different people's experiences through the holocaust. Maus also shows that not all of the victims were/are nice people. Thus, the quality of being human and that of being valuable cannot be defined by one's behavior or words - it must be something intrinsic to us. No, this is not the message of Maus; there is no message (p202). But nonetheless, it is something we can learn from reading this book along with many other survivor stories.

The Complete Maus is a graphic novel that tells two stories, one set in 1930s and 1940s Europe, and the other in roughly present day 1980s America, when and where the book was being written. The first story is one that breaks the fourth wall in that it’s the story of the author, Art Spiegelman, and his father, the elderly Vladek Spiegelman. Art is a cartoonist interviewing his father about what it was like to be a Polish Jew during the buildup to WWII. He tells the story of his (as well as his wife Anja’s) trials and ultimate survival of the war and the Holocaust. As the story progresses, we discover that Vladek has remarried to another survivor named Mala in the years since Anja passed away in 1968. But that relationship is a complicated one (to say the least) as Vladek is a deeply flawed man in his old age. These flaws cause rifts between Art and Vladek as well. This first story zeroes in on these complications between Vladek, Art, and Mala. The second story is a love story between Vladek and Anja as a young couple facing the dangerous and genocidal landscape of WWII Europe. Throughout the late 1930s until the war ended in 1945, the two relied on each other for the strength to survive. Even when things were at their most bleak, while both were imprisoned in Auschwitz, they managed to get messages back-and-forth to each other, and Vladek even managed to get his wife some food here and there. Once the war ended and they both escaped with their lives, Vladek found Anja again back in their hometown and they made a life together, eventually having a son named Art in 1950. The book is full of details about what many Jewish people experienced during the war. Anja came from a wealthy family, and Vladek was a successful business owner himself. But they all started losing their businesses and money as the landscape started to change. Vladek and Anja survived being sent to the ghettos in large part due to Vladek’s determined, clever, resourceful fortitude. They hid in bunkers with dirt and mice. In Auschwitz, Anja nearly died of starvation, and Vladek nearly of typhus. They were both tortured and beaten by Nazis, and Vladek was nearly murdered by Nazis on several occasions. They both lost nearly their entire families to the Nazis, including their first son Richieu, their parents, siblings, cousins and friends. The two stories come together near the end as the timelines merge. That’s when the point is really driven home about how Vladek’s experiences in the war affected his psychology in later years. Although Vladek is a sympathetic character in his youth (smart, clever, resourceful and someone the reader really roots for), he is not depicted that way as an elderly man. This is a big part of the struggle for Art, attempting to reconcile the cheap, stubborn, argumentative (and sometimes racist) elderly man with the man he was in his youth. Vladek wasn’t the only one who suffered as a result of the trauma experienced during the war. Anja had suffered from some sort of affliction that saw her hospitalized before the war, but she committed suicide in 1968. And Art battled the ghost of his dead brother Richieu, whom he had never met. When it seemed that a being sent to a work or death camp was imminent, Anja’s sister thought she could get her kids to safety in the countryside, so Anja and Vladek sent their very young son Richieu with her, hoping he’d have a better chance of surviving. Ultimately when she and the kids were hunted by the Nazis, she killed herself and all the kids to prevent them from suffering a more painful death upon capture. And even though Richieu was dead before Art was ever born, he lived with his dead brother’s ghost ever-present as he grew up in Richieu’s shadow. In the book, people are drawn as animals. For example, Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis are cats. I don’t know whether it makes the work more or less impressive as a result, but I almost completely forgot that they were mice and cats within a couple of pages. What makes this book great for me is the storytelling, not the metaphor. This is the story of two lovers who survived one of the most terrible times in human history. They relied on each other, and even under the worst of circumstances, they persevered together. And it was also the story of the aftermath, the damage done and the trauma inflicted upon those who did manage to survive and the generations that followed. I’ve never been a big graphic novel fan, but this is a fine piece of work. This book made me think of a poem written by Leonard Cohen poem from his book “Let Us Compare Mythologies” – 'Lovers' During the first pogrom they Met behind the ruins of their homes – Sweet merchants trading: her love For a history full of poems. And at the hot ovens they Cunningly managed a brief Kiss before the soldier came To knock out her golden teeth. And in the furnace itself As the flames flamed higher. He tried to kiss her burning breasts As she burned in the fire. Later he often wondered: Was their barter completed? While men around him plundered. And knew he had been cheated.

I bought this specifically as it had been banned recently as I tend to want to read what others do not want me to as a contrarian. It is a graphic novel so the tale is told in pictures as well as words which takes some work to read, and the subject matter is dark and the author does a good job of presenting it very clearly without hiding truth as he sees it. It is a story about a man trying to understand his grandfather and a time he went through that changed him before the author ever met him. It does have some very brutal bits, it covers the holocaust from the perspective of someone who was a victim of it in Poland as the Nazi regime was in power, and someone who was sent to a concentration camp and was a survivor but knew many who were not personally. The author relates these stories as told to him and draws them as well, even as he also shows his own conflicts with his feeling about it in the modern day as a young man in America. The contrast of the old grandfather he has to deal with now whose habits and mannerisms he finds range from annoying to infuriating at times, to the person he is discovering from his stories, an optimistic and naïve youth who is being bent and shaped by harsh realities and a changing power structure, is really expressed often and passionately. The novel is actually broken up into two books, and the writer states he thought about stopping writing due to how much it was affecting him to keep digging into this material. This was not an easy book to write, nor an easy story for him to hear. Especially it was not an easy thing for him to go through with is grandfather and be able to reconcile the man he knew with the man he discovered, and finally the more complete man he was left with. All of this comes through very clearly as you read this book. In the end I felt I got a glimpse into two men's lives, and a bit of perspective on a point in history that I was not a part of and how it shaped attitudes going forward. Trying to understand things from a different person's POV is important, it allows us to empathize and challenge our own views, either strengthening them or removing flaws to make them better. I saw nothing in here that needs to be banned, to be unwritten or not shared, nothing that can't be talked about. It has ideas and words, opinions and personal points of view. Mostly it has one person telling us another persons story and how it made him feel. About the story, and about the other person. It is one man's truth, as honest as all of our own truths, and just as valid and deserving of being heard. Debate it, avoid it, read it or share it but do not ban it I implore you.

This is a very good, frank story (actually more than one story as you read it) about one of the hardest periods of human history... the Holocaust. I'll admit, I'm one of those who went out and got this after the cancel actions of the TN BOE (can't remember which city or county) and ensuing vitriol. I'm glad I did. I've studied history and am very acquainted with the history of the Holocaust. Expert? Not a chance, but fairly knowledgeable in the broad sense. But, I also wish I'd have had this book much earlier in life. This is a very good book (actually two books in one) for anyone from about 8 on up. It's written so that a child can grasp the basic concepts and various components without any need of understanding the atrocities involved in any significant detail; it's also written so an adult can understand some of the more nuanced points in the core story. Some adults may not appreciate it because of its simplicity, but it's a good read for all. The use of the mice, cats, etc. is very interesting and adds to the comprehension potential for the younger folks. Bottom line: If I had a kid in the house, 8 or above, I'd absolutely steer them to read this book. It's not a hard read by language composition (It appears to be written at about a 3rd or 4th grade level or so). It's written for fairly easy comprehension in short, bite-sized pieces with obvious logical breaking points throughout (they'll be obvious, even without some cue that says "Break here." It's not a long read, but you may not want to try to digest all at one time. Knowledge and truth should not be feared if you're not a part of the problem being discussed. A fear of truth coming out, such as this, is an irrational fear that does nothing but allow the hatred to continue to fester and live for much longer periods.

Amazing - all the glowing reviews you might have seen are true. Difficult to capture what Spiegelman did here. "Maus" is so honest, so lucid, so scary and real; quite unlike any other book I know. It has humor, too, as befits a "comic book" and one that captures so vividly such infamy. At one point, when he and his wife are driving the car, Spiegelman doubts his capability of pulling off "Maus" - both the Holocaust and his complicated relationship with his father, a survivor are too immense a topic. He runs through his doubts for a few panels and, when his wife tells him to "just be honest," Spiegelman shoots back, "See what I mean? In real life you'd never have let me talk this long without interrupting." The glimpses of humanity in the midst of such cruelty are touching. At one point, Vladek Spiegelman runs into an old friend, Mandelbaum, at Auschwitz. Something of a big shot before the war, Mandelbaum is a mess in Aushwitz. He drops his spoon and it's stolen almost before it hits the ground. He dropped it in part because his pants are too big for him and he has to hold them up, while he only has one shoe and that is way too big. It's a miracle he's stayed alive. Broken, he sobs to Vladek, "My God. Please God...help me find a piece of string and a shoe that fits." "But here God didn't come," Vladek says. "We were all on our own." In light of what happened in Israel on Oct. 7, and the infuriating support the modern Left has given to Hamas, "Maus" should be required reading. Those awful events brought me back to the book and it is as good and as powerful as ever. A genuine achievement; "Maus" is literature that will last forever.

The story was very well crafted. The book is a story told by the author's father to the author. The author is creating this very story at the time he is taking notes on the story his father is telling him. An ingenious method for passing on these details. By telling the story in this method the author is able to relay to the reader more details than those just in the father's story. He is able to also give details about how life was for his father after the war - this is seen in their interactions and conversations. I'm not a big fan of the comic concept of relaying the story and I don't think it added any value to the story, but I also must admit it did not subtract from the story or prove a distraction. This book is a quick read - this physical book contains both Maus I & II. Each part is further divided into chapters. The book is not written in flawless English; it is written in broken English in some parts however this did not subtract from the story either. The book is detailed in how it describes the events of the Holocaust and those leading up to it, but it does not seem to attempt to be extra gory for the purpose of making a point. The details were presented in a very unbiased and mater of fact fashion. Owing to the graphic novel style of this text however there are some accompanying images to the detailed stories that some may find disturbing - though the images are not photographs for the most part and are not too detailed in their depiction of gruesome events. The book may have been more powerful with real images, since so many exist. All in all a good read for educational purposes. The book encompasses before, during, and after the war and is a good introduction to a study of the Holocaust. Enough terms and names of people and places are mentioned so you could look up additional information after wards or suspend your reading here.

When they say this is one of the best comic books ever, they really mean it's one of the best. I happen to agree putting this right up there with Watchmen and Sandman. Maus provokes you to think differently about things. Everyone who reads comics needs to read this comic at some point or at least have proper knowledge of the tale. One of the biggest reason I loved this is because I normally don't like reading Holocaust stories. It's not because they are too depressing or terrifying to read, but more on the line of how they are told. Usually they are all told the same way. This one is different though. There is a happy conclusion to tragic tale and with a normal outcome. In addition, this doesn't just focus on the Jewish in the camps either. If feel, at least, that so many people often forget the Nazi's locked up the French and Polish Catholics as well. This comic book shows that several time making them both allies and enemies to the Jewish. Another strong point to the comic and what it's most famous for is the usage of anthropomorphic animals to tell the story of the Holocaust. Having some Polish bod myself, I can see there is some predigest of having them depicted as pigs in this comic book. However, that's the point of the book and why the Polish are pigs. The Jewish are mice because they were small and meek. The Germans are cats because they toy and eat mice. The Americans are dogs, the French are fogs, the Swedish are reindeer, and the Gypsies are moths. We may be humans, but we're all animals deep inside. My only complaint to this book was it took me longer to read then most comic books. Most of the time I can finish them in two days with five to six issue trades. Even ten issue thing I can finish with in three days. This just took me long because it’s so rich in text and information it a lot to grasp. The father is hard to understand at times too. However, don’t let this be a bad thing. In fact, I really liked the fact I’m finding more challenging comics to read. Modern day stuff has really dumbed down compared to the 80s stuff. I should have read this comic before. It was recommend by a tutor I had at college because of a short story I wrote about a bulldog and previous stories I wrote using animals to tell my "human" story. I’m glad I read this one though. It will defiantly change your view on what a good comic actually means.

Jamás había llorado tanto con un cómic, una historia increíble, la edición en pasta dura es bastante buena, de buenísima calidad y las hojas también son increíbles. Merece completamente la pena, la mejor compra para empezar el año.

La historia del holocausto judio contada por sus victimas y supervivientes. Spiegelman narra el sufrimiento de sus padres y resto de familia durante la ocupación nazi y la segunda guerra mundial utilizando la novela gráfica como via narrativa. Imprescindidible. Para comprender una pequeña parte de la historia del siglo XX. No te dejes engañar por la caracterización animal de los personajes. La obra destila el sufrimiento humano y refleja como se pueden llegar a comportar los seres humanos, y como quedan marcados todos.

Due to the condition description as "good" I was worried this was a used item. It looks or is brand new, I cannot see that anyone ever touched this book. Great item, thanks.

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